Books Are My People Weekly Newsletter
out today, paperback releases and more!
A warm welcome to any new subscribers! You can learn more about me by visiting my introductory post here.
Books Are My People: A Podcast Companion Newsletter
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I'm Jennifer Caloyeras and I love books. And I love sharing books! I even love writing books. And making books! And teaching people how to write books!
Did you catch my Live book recommendation with Annie of SoThis? We each recommended two books plus one book coming out in January that we’re looking forward to reading. Watch it here.
Thank you to those of you who attended the inaugural Book Social zoom on Thursday. You shared SO many wonderful book titles. Paying subscribers can access the list of all the books we talked by clicking here and scrolling all the way to the bottom.
Happening this week:
After a two-week battle with the flu, I am finally starting to feel like myself again.
I am attending this FREE art summit (Thank you Sarah Z. Short for the recommendation.)
Artist Abby Houston is hosting her annual Artist Trading Card Swap. Visit her on instagram @abbypainterart to join in the fun! I loved making the cards above with collage scraps.
I can’t wait to share what fun literary event I am attending in L.A. this week. It’s my first event that I’m being invited to as press!
Paying subscribers, we’re inching closer and closer to reading Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang for our Read With Me selection! Thursday, January 25th, I’ll release the schedule of events. The first video drops February 5th. If you’re champing (did you know it’s “champing” and not “chomping?”) at the bit to start reading, don’t read past the first three chapters!
As a gift to you in the new year, now through January 31st I’m offering 20% off full-year subscriptions!
Let’s move on to the books!
Out Today:
A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.
key words: literary fiction, family secrets, addiction, obsession, Iranian-American, faith, humor, written by a poet, buzzy book
*Family Family by Laurie Frankel
An adoptive mom is an actor who makes a movie about adoption. When her backstory leaks to the press, everyone seems to have an opinion.
key words: family, adoption, Hollywood
The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
A dazzling magical realism western in the vein of Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez, The Bullet Swallower follows a Mexican bandido as he sets off for Texas to save his family, only to encounter a mysterious figure who has come, finally, to collect a cosmic debt generations in the making.
key words: 1890’s, Mexico, heist, revenge, 1960’s, ancestors, folklore, saga, Western
An epic novel set in mid-nineteenth-century America about the spiritual costs of a freedom that demands fierce protection
key words: 1830’s, slavery, freedom, community, memory, Black surrealism, mythology, spirituality
Dead in Long Beach, CA by Venita Blackburn
A gut-busting and heartbreaking descent into one woman's fraying connection to reality, from a soon-to-be superstar.
key words: murder, Long Beach, author, mystery, suspense, grief
This genre-bending African futurist horror novel blends The Handmaid's Tale with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, cyberpunk body-hopping ghost story exploring motherhood, memory, and a woman's right to her own body.
key words: futuristic, Botswana, complicity, inequality, body hoppers, criminals
You, Me & Ulysses S. Grant by Brad Neely
A farcical biography of Ulysses S. Grant, You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant is a history lesson disguised as an uproarious novel. Spanning from Grant's birth until his victory over the Confederacy,
key words: history, postmodern, humor
Toxic: Women Fame, and the Tabloid 2000’s by Sarah Ditum
A scathing reexamination of the lives of nine female celebrities in the 2000s and the sexist, exploitative culture that took them down.
key words: journalist, celebrity, culture
Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke
A young Jamaican woman grapples with grief as she discovers her family and her home are always just out of reach.
key words: Jamaica, sisters, childhood memories, home, identity
I Sing to Use the Waiting by Zachary Pace
I Sing to Use the Waiting is a vital and affecting reflection on how popular culture can shape personal identity.
key words: music, mixtape structure, queer voices, nonfiction
Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.
key words: Irish, outsiders
No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall
A novel about three sisters, two murders, and too many secrets to count.
key words: secrets, mystery, thriller marriage, estranged sisters, murder
Lovers in Auschwitz by Keren Blankfeld
The incredible true story of two Holocaust survivors who fell in love in Auschwitz, only to be separated upon liberation and lead remarkable lives apart following the war--and then find each other again more than 70 years later.
key words: nonfiction, concentration camp, love, survival
Paperback Releases:
*Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
One of my favorite reads of 2023, a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.
Picasso’s Lovers by Jeanne Mackin
A tangled and vivid portrait of the women caught in Picasso's charismatic orbit through the affairs, the scandals, and the art--only this time, they hold the brush.
Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb
A gripping page-turner from the celebrated author of book club favorite The Violin Conspiracy. Music professor Bern Hendricks discovers a shocking secret about the most famous American composer of all time--his music may have been stolen from a Black Jazz Age prodigy named Josephine Reed.
In this lively, funny memoir, Peggy Orenstein sets out to make a sweater from scratch--shearing, spinning, dyeing wool--and in the process discovers how we find our deepest selves through craft. Orenstein spins a yarn that will appeal to everyone.
A glimpse of Greece using acrylic ink taken from the Virtual Art Retreat class I’m taking with
from .
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